The Top Holiday Gift in Every State

Americans spent over $600 billion buying gifts during the holidays last year, and all signs point to this year being even bigger.

The holiday shopping season more or less officially runs from the Friday after Thanksgiving, often referred to as Black Friday, through Christmas. When the season begins, many of this year’s hottest products will be wildly popular across the country – toys like the Fingerlings and Hatchimals, video game consoles like the Xbox One and Nintendo Switch, and household products like the Keurig K-cup coffee maker.

E-commerce sites like Amazon.com have increasingly moved to dominate the season. Cyber Monday — the Monday after Thanksgiving in which online stores offer deals of their own — is slowly moving to replace Black Friday. This year, shoppers expect to do roughly 40% of their shopping online, up from a third just two years ago. Online shoppers also will likely spend several hundred dollars more than those who only buy gifts in stores this year.

The growth of e-commerce and the decline of local shopping likely means that what people buy for their friends and loved ones for the holidays is less dependent on what is available at local stores.

Still, there are significant differences in the items Americans shop for during the holiday season from one state to the next. For example, people in Vermont and New Hampshire are many times more likely to consider buying a Keurig as a gift than the residents of Alaska or Wyoming. Residents of Washington state are much more likely to purchase the video game Destiny 2 as a gift than those in Mississippi.

Based on an analysis of the most popular gifted items on Amazon.com and Google’s projected keyword searches for the upcoming holiday shopping season, 24/7 Wall St. identified the top holiday gifts in each state. To avoid repetition, each item is only assigned to one state, and ties were broken based on searches per capita. Items included in this article were selected based solely on the methodology. The article includes affiliate links, and 24/7 Wall St. may get a share of the revenue from sales.